Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union (formerly known as the CAW), has filed to unionize Toyota plants in Canada. The Financial Post reports that more than 40 percent of Toyota’s 6,500 workers have signed union cards.

According the paper, Unifor president Jerry Dias characterized the move to unionize as an “internal effort”, with employees apparently creating their own union cards and sending them to Unifor.

The FP notes that

“Employees at the Toyota plants have raised concerns about several recent unilateral changes at the plants, including moving new hires to a defined-contribution pension plan and the hours they work. They also have concerns about the company ability to impose other changes, and other health and safety concerns. In order for the certification vote to pass, 50% plus one of the Toyota workers have to vote in favor of unionization.”

According to our source, the Japanese take a dim view of any outside forces trying to meddle in the management of their plant – unions included. Unions do exist in Japanese auto plants, but don’t aim to do this, or any other initiative that would be seen as hostile in the context of Japanese labor relations.

> If these people end up losing their jobs and lifestyles forever, at least they’ll have voted for it.

I wonder if these anti-collective types also willing vote to open their own jobs to international competition, or they’ve already got theirs under protection of the US anti-immigration services of the past so it doesn’t matter.

> My engineering design job is always under threat of international competition, when 8 engineers in India/Asia can be bought for the price of 1 me, or so I’m told.

Your job is to a significant degree protected by the incompetence of managers ill equipped to deal with talent abroad. The second part of that equation is Uncle Sam preventing those dirty foreigners from coming to the US to physically displace you.

The white collar equivalent to free trade is open borders. It’s the powder cocaine equivalent to crack far as political protection is involved.

> But international labor competition isn’t the issue at Toyota Canada.

It is when the same product Mexicans can make for lower wages freely crosses the border in a way they themselves physically can’t.

Disagree on the transformation of low level retail to non-human entities (at least in North America)

Consumers here still want to deal with humans. The level of distrust of the robot race is unbelievably ironic give Google’s view on privacy, the NSA listening to everyone, and how willing the general population is to give up all their personal secrets to Facebook.

To put in the words of the CTO of Taco Bell, you have to sell a whole lot of tacos to justify spending $100 on machinery or software.

The capital cost will be such that it will prevent the investment. Retails in particular have razor thin margins, 2% to 3% net. Any technological investment needs to be amortized in less than 18 months – or the operation is toast.

Another thing to consider, if I go into Jack In The Box today I can order a Jumbo Jack, no mayo, extra tomato, extra lettuce, add a fried egg on top, and no bun.

A human can handle all of these tasks – a machine will have to anticipate all of that logic and have the supplies and packaging to put it all together.

It is one thing to make pre-packaged food on an industrial scale. It’s a whole different issue to do small scale at a local restaurant. Regardless, you don’t negate the need for labor – someone has to maintain, monitor, and supply the machines. This will also require a higher skill set than a high school drop out, which can be easily trained to flip burgers.

Finally, if the machine needs cleaning, service, or breaks, the whole unit is shut down. There is no redundancy. If a fry cook shows up late, I can call another human to take his place, or flog the humans in place to cover the hole.

A machine can’t do that.

Next, machinery and automated systems are more expensive to operate if they don’t run at 100% capacity. This is a key premise of LEAN manufacturing. Fast food restaurants have significant down time through the day.

The reality, low paid, low skilled workers are still the best answer, and the price of machinery to replace them is going to have to drop significantly.

I would also suspect consumer backlash, on buying a “fresh” meal, created by robots.

A local McDonalds in my small town has an “integrated work cell” to handle the drink orders for the drive thru window; I was fascinated by it.

It would drop the correct size cup onto the conveyor, which moved it down to be filled with crushed ice. It then moved down to be filled with the correct amount of the correct fountain drink. I don’t believe it put the lid on; I think the human did it before removing it from the conveyor.

I was fascinated to see it there, and to watch it work. But like APaGttH said; if it went down; then the drive thru staff would either have to try to work around it; or run to the dining room to fill the drink orders. It is highly unlikely the employees would be able to fix it; so someone would have to come on site to repair it.

And drive thru times are a big deal in the fast food industry; any sort of breakdown that could affect services times would be frowned upon.

Luddite claims of automation putting everyone out of work goes back 200 years. Instead, automation rids us of the boring, dirty, and dangerous jobs while providing highly skilled jobs to those who wish to pursue them.

Amid the usual orgy of union-bashing, I seem to recall that the only reason these Canadian jobs exist at all is because of flim-flammery by Detroit management.

When the horrible gas mileage of American car designs prodded the federal government into passing modest CAFE fleet average requirements for gas mileage, a company’s most gas-hogging models didn’t count against their U.S. average if they weren’t made in the U.S. So the companies, needing every break they could get, exported big-car production to Canada and built small cars (sometimes at a loss) in the U.S.

Ironically, at the same time, the import quotas against the Japanese led them to crush the American makers even faster by incenting THEM to build big cars abroad. Since they could import only X units, the only route to greater profitability overall was to wring more profit out of each Japanese-built unit sold. So they relentlessly pushed upmarket with their Japanese-built models, while maintaining the cheaper models from transplant factories that let them keep the price down by avoiding the yen disadvantage.

What’s ironic is that the generally better voter-enforced social welfare in Canada alleviates pressures of the proles getting uppity, just like taxes leeched off the rest of the country for the american south.

Who is going to pay for social welfare once idiocy drives all the jobs overseas? Do you think that lack of economic activity could become an issue? Do you think legislation creates all the goods and services that you consider to be rights?

Here lies the hypocrisy of this ideology. It’s OK to take resourcees from a minortiy group by force if their ingroup majority feels entitled to it. But it’s not OK for their identified outgroup to earn and keep a profit through voluntary exchange.

> Here lies the of this ideology. It’s OK to take resourcees from a minortiy group by force if their ingroup majority feels entitled to it. But it’s not OK for their identified outgroup to earn and keep a profit through voluntary exchange.

No, the failed ethic here is presuming heliocentrism or “force” or such a law from god and blaming men when it appears entirely untrue.

“Voluntary exchange” simply doesn’t exist without a social contract. The lion doesn’t refer to the legal terms when eying the herd of water buffalo, even if they were signed with some other lion.

It’s also worth noting that your precious property rights is a morality of those with much property held to the exclusion of others. If you’re evidently capable of reading the New Rand Testament, it’s worth checking out the Old Nietzschian one.

…Measuring manufacturing costs across national boundaries can be tricky because some costs are specific to individual locales. One example is compliance with Ontario’s Toxics Reduction Act, which requires a factory to issue an annual report of the toxic substances it uses, creates and releases. But some areas — labor costs, taxes, utility rates, government incentives — are easier to compare.

Labor costs are a key driver, especially to Mexico. The Center for Automotive Research puts the average Mexican auto worker’s compensation, including wages and benefits, at about $8 per hour, in comparison to about $39 in Canada and $37 for union workers in the United States under the UAW’s two-tier wage system. (All figures are stated in U.S. dollars.) The numbers can fluctuate, however, with fluctuations in the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso.

Canada’s wage rates used to be comparable to U.S. rates before the introduction of the controversial two-tier wage system in the United States in 2007. Now 40 percent of Chrysler’s U.S. work force earns the lower-tier wage, while all of its Canadian workers are at the full pay scale.

@Walleyeman57.. Nooo, your close, but you missed one thing. We do have “two tiered wages” here. However most of the lower tier are, layed off at this time.

In Canada our “lower tier” make higher wages than those in the US do. That being said, our lower tier are not considered employees. Their more like contract workers. The Canadian version of “lower tier” have very little lay off, and recall rights, and lower benefits. Than do their American counterparts.

Lets talk about defined benefit pensions. GM Canada, and GM USA has made it perfectly clear to the UAW/UNIFOR and the former CAW. ” Nobody gets hired with a “defined pension benefit” plan. Nobody!

I can’t stand when large groups of working people think they’re entitled for some reason to be well paid for a job any ordinary person could do.

Don’t they understand that if you’re average, you should live in near-poverty?

And in an unrelated development, a newly released study by two major universities shows the richest 0.1% of America’s population is now receiving the highest percentage of the nation’s wealth since before the start of the Great Depression.

Yep, and good for them. I hope they do unionize and gain their say, workers need to be heard. I don’t know about Canada, but in Brazil working for Japanese companies is never a walk in the park. In China, Honda suffered a strike. In India a plant manager was killed during a strike. I wonder if this is a trend as this phrase from the article “the Japanese take a dim view of any outside forces trying to meddle in the management of their plant – unions included” rings true.

Canadian Detroit Three plants are straight-jacketed by union rules and wages. With no prospect of relief from politicians courting the unions they are fleeing to Worker Choice jurisdictions. GM has closed several facilities, the Oshawa GM plant is a shadow of its former greatness. Ford has also closed several factories including the St. Thomas plant. That’s tens of thousands of jobs in the toilet. If this happens Canada will inevitably wave goodbye to Toyota, probably Honda too. It was a great gig while it lasted!

Yet somehow those feckless, bravhearted and salt of the earth UAW brothers and sisters where able to out-wit the suits. Oh the suits had engineering degrees and MBA’s. Why, some even went to Ivy League schools. The suits agreed to the union’s terms each and every time. Should’ve one of the Big 3 looked at UAW president and said “as of midnight, we’re on strike”? We’ll never know. What the management suites at all Big 3 automakers where too dumb to understand was that the Japanese where eating their catered buffet lunches and just kept on keeping on until retirement. Glad I wasn’t a GM lifer sitting on stock options. Lots of blame to go around; neither management or the UAW where complete saints or sinners. Then again most of the union bashers are too dense to an in-depth analysis of the automotive industry’s shortcomings. It’s oh so mentally fat and lazy and requires sub-par intellectual work to go “It’s all the UAW’s fault; all theirs, completely theirs!!!!” May I remind of you of the GM team of engineering excellence that gave us the Vega?

This is why so many factories are locating to this area. Right-to-work laws down here have allowed for people to choose whether they want to fall with the union, or deal with their low wages because they failed high school and went to Chattahoochee Tech. No where else.

Though Alabama is a laughingstock to us, it’s a great place to put a factory. Near resources, I-20, 85, and 65 nearby, lots of rural, cheap land, putting the wanderers of downtown Montgomery to work. What more would a company want? Honda, Mercedes-Benz, and Hyundai have found the benefits of this poor state.

Probably an equally bigger factor for Alabama being a magnet for auto manufacturers is the willingness of the state government to bend over and fork out financial incentives to an extreme degree, to the point where it is very costly to the taxpayer. Daimler Benz’s financial sweetners were so great that the Alabama state government had to make cuts in the education budget one year after they gave away bucks to DB.

@BOFO….While I don’t 100 percent disagree with you, you might want to think about this. Were slowly coming out of the of the worst economic times since the 30’s. For a whole lot of blue collar folks the recession never ended. This is the fertile ground that unions find their roots. Think of the late 30’s

On another front. There is very smart guy, with a very powerfull military, looking at Europe with greedy eyes.

Our militaries are becoming smaller in size, but a drone is still operated by a pilot in the rear with the gear.

There is still no replacement for a grunt pounding the ground.

The technology the grunts use helps displace the sheer ability to fight against numbers. A well equipped and trained soldier from a first world nation is going to have the mission effectiveness of 4, 6, maybe even 10 ill-trained soldiers from a third world Hell hole like North Korea.

Asymmetrical warfare aside – it is still human beings that make the tactical and strategic decisions under fire, based on training, that no computer can remotely handle.

Automation of systems has replaced the needs for say weapons loaders and targeting directors on a warship – but you still need humans to maintain the systems and to make the final FoF decisions.

BAFO, one of the largest flight training bases for drones is about 30 miles from where I live so I have these damn things flying overhead often, day and night.

They use three types of drones at this military facility along with fullsize piloted combat aircraft like the F-22, German Tornado and soon, the F16.

Recently we had an F4 drone, a fullsize manned combat aircraft converted into a drone, crash at the White Sands National Monument. What a mess! Wreckage was strewn over a large area and the monument was closed for cleanup.

There have been crashes of the two smaller unmanned drones on take-offs and landings but that doesn’t create as much of a mess and the crashes usually happen on take-offs and landings, because flying them is done from a keyboard with a flight computer doing all the piloting.

@Big Al: Actually, I was marveling at how badly you manage to mangle that sentence without need of a thesaurus.

@high: I know (manned) F-4G Wild Weasels were involved in the Gulf War, but to the best of my knowledge, the QF-4 (or any other aircraft converted to target duty) has never seen combat. If I’m wrong, though, I’d love to find out how they were used.

Oh, BAFO is great on theory. Ya know reading magazines makes you a true warfighter! “Soldier of Fortune” and “Aviation Week” still sell magazines. Different levels of education for their audiences; same results. There is a great of information out there that won’t and will not be given to the public by the military. Not as bad as fat guys siting at bar claiming they where Special Forces; they’d tell ya more but their record is “classified”. Not as bad as that, but in the same area.

darkwing, what I was told by active duty people who were actually in Iraq at the time, on opening night of the war a bunch of unmanned drones were sent across the border into Iraq and were promptly shot down by the Iraqi air defenses.

This group of drones was called Poobah’s Party and were decoys used to get the Iraqi radars to light up at which time the radar seeking missiles on the attacking manned aircraft behind the drones put them out of commission.

But the use of drones is nothing new. While I was still on active duty I remember hearing about the Israeli-Syrian air battle over the Bakaa valley which also used drones to lure out the Syrian fighters.

What set that air battle apart from all previous ones were that the Israelis were using the new AIM-9L supercooled-heatseeker missiles which could actually detect heat through the intake of the Syrian aircraft which allowed for a head-on frontal shot right down the intake.

Much of this info never makes it to the general public until decades after the fact. To me it is peripheral information whenever I hear or read about something like that.

The flights of drones over the area where I live is real. There have been numerous times when going to the Commissary on the base I see one in the base-leg traffic pattern waiting for clearance to land on its (dedicated) runway.

During my last visit to Edwards AFB and China Lake I saw numerous drones being operated simultaneously and those must have been Navy drones because they looked totally different from the ones in use at the airbase near my home.

Another notch in the belt, another successful plant unionized. The western world is unionizing under your feet and some of the right-wing B&B are still arguing old spent ideas that have long belonged on the trash heap. The world is changing and the latest economic crash brought the last era of good feelings to a close and showed the world what being a 1%er really meant.

I just want to know how many times does the reality have to be explained to you before you stop using a false narrative to sell your view? Detroit didn’t collapse because of the UAW or public service unions. Detroit was a single-industry town that was incentivized to not reinvest in plants while the city constantly shirked fulfilling the long-term pension funds when the times were good because of poor city management. It had zero to do with unionization and instead to a willingness to be fiscally unsafe. This is currently the issue with almost all right-wing arguments, they want to blame the one thing that works while accepting everything that’s broken.

> It had zero to do with unionization and instead to a willingness to be fiscally unsafe. This is currently the issue with almost all right-wing arguments, they want to blame the one thing that works while accepting everything that’s broken.

Shades of the second coming aka Reagan who sold fiscal responsibility while expending every last dollar on weapons not meant to be shot. Mindless followers ready to blame anything but this obvious retardation are strong contenders for its definition in the dictionary.

Well that is the goal of right-wing governments in the US isn’t it? Just keep spending money because nobody wants a real reduction in services but everybody is willing to accept lower taxes (even if the wealthiest of us get most of the benefit). Not to mention the basic underpinnings of what we call ‘welfare’ is being exploited by industries that have figured out how to manipulate public opinion while ignoring economics in relationship to their employment system.

Our society is about selling BS, not acknowledging hard facts. This is something I actually try to instill in my students, that you can beat your opponents with facts but they’ll never budge. Instead figure out what is best then make an argument that sells on main street.

@Xeranar – you are correct that facts don’t work. Logic will never trump the illogical.
Emotions and primitive reflexes are what drive human beings whether they like to admit it or not.
We are driven by the emotive survival based part of the brain.
Interestingly enough, Conservatives often tend to fair better because their doctrine appeals to 5-6 of those primitive emotional survival mechanisms. Liberals on the other had have a harder time because their views tend to appeal to only 2-3 of those “instincts”.

We’ve seen the promise of the optimistic card check numbers fizzle out time and time again lately. I’d be surprised if this plant votes in Unifor, these workers aren’t completely ignorant of the world around around them. Threatening to increase the costs in an already uncompetitive business environment won’t bode well for the long term prospects of the plant.

You beat me to the whole issue with Interstate Bakeries. The popular statement was ‘unions caused their collapse’ even after the books were opened and the reality was found that IB was largely profitable but it was an issue of the management draining the system dry while their poor excuse for ‘baked goods’ were losing favor with a more health conscious society.

But hey, don’t let a good moral economic theory get in the way of reality…

I agree with this except the part about “who signed the contract”. Does any company (outside of VAG USA) willingly want to sign such a contract? What recourse do they even have? Can they just fire everyone for attempting to unionize and start over?

Well, they’re being paid at least eight US dollars or so an hour. For a job in the secondary sector, that isn’t bad.

Then, with the unions, pay will be raised, and Toyota wouldn’t want to build vehicles in Canada due to costly labor. This will mean Toyota would have to locate to an LDC that pays three US cents an hour in order to afford building RAV4s, Corollas, etc. Simple glimpse of Chapter 11 in the Rubenstein book could tell you that.

Well that goes without saying, I mean we can’t possibly make things in the country where they’re to be sold because that would be inefficient use of labor. As long as the foreign markets are cheaper (especially mexico) and we allow things like NAFTA to continue we’ll continue to impoverish ourselves in the name of keeping Toyota’s stock value up.

I don’t think Toyota is going to give new hires a defined pension plan, as per this post. Quite the opposite.

According to articles in newspapers other than FP (which I find shallow in general), Toyota Canada hires contract workers, and cherry picks the hard workers as new hires after 2 or even 3 years. Then they get covered by Toyota’s “no layoff” policy.

Short lead-time shift scheduling, health and safety matters seem to be the issues, not pay and benefits. There are provincial rules on health and safety matters, but with no union and perhaps an overly patrician attitude by Toyota managers, the individual worker has little recourse even if regular “safety meetings” are held as the law requires.

Toyota hates to have to kowtow to anyone else’s rules. Too bad it cost them $1.2 billion for not getting around to obeying NHTSA regulations, because they felt their own procedures were adequate.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. WalFart abandoned a store in Quebec when the employees unionized.

‘I would also suspect consumer backlash, on buying a “fresh” meal, created by robots.’ – I think you don’t realize how big money can trick consumer into this , and how stupid, ignorant(or brainwashed..) consumer can be(..or may become..)..

Corporation(as a whole) acts like ‘sociopath’..
Uninos were created a long time ago to protect people from..suits(they are dangerous but irrelevant(after all) – yeah, they have NBA’s and MBA’s:), but they are just short-sihghted, career-driven, brainwashed tools) and the ‘real OWNers\'[watch: George Carlin – Owners]:)

Who want to go back to XIX century wild-capitalismus ? .. we’ve got global-rat-race right now.. and this trend is growing and speeding up ..